my new shoes for the Heckler arrived recently. Specialized Taho’s, nice combination of lightweight hikey shoe with a pretty stiff bottom. Not as light or stiff as my last few pairs, but this bike requires slightly more bipedal-oriented and less pedal-oriented footware. They also are said to work fine with some fat Time Z pedals. the shoes I never tried on, but my last mtb shoes and my roadies are Specialized and they are very consistent w. size, plus they make damn good shoes if you can avoid their premium prices. turns out Beckie actually had this same shoe, and liked it, and cause they don’t fit into Specialized’s all racey racer image they list for only $75. Got em for $73 incl shipping. The pedals are another story I have never run that style clip and its been ages since I ran flat-style pedals. I thought it would take serveral rides to get the feel of all that bidness. In fact, I mounted the pedals on the Blur and rode a few rides that way. The pedals were a minor change and took me 1.5 rides to get comfortable on, not quite there yet but after a ride on National and a couple spills I now believe I can drop the damn bike and get out just as fast as with the spds. Getting the cleats places right has taken some doing, and of course after one ride on National the pedals look as beat to shit as anything else. I didn’t feel much better with the flat style, didn’t seem like I could remount and ride off any faster. It is a steadier base unclipped, but I’m not sure how I will use that…hopefully riding with some better tech riders and seeing them in action will help.

Ironic that everyone always says shoes are so personal and you have to try them on. They were the last things I needed to pick out, and by then the whole damn bike was something I barely tried on. At least I knew the shoes would fit! Its totally metaphoric for this entire experience. In order to decide what in the hell I wanted to buy when nothing was available anywhere to test ride, I had to put a label on how I would ride this bike and the tools I wanted for it so that I could buy them amidst the myriad of possible combinations. And I didn’t get to actually see or touch any of em before-hand. So much like how I trust in the Specialized shoes, I have to trust in Santa Cruz and Adventure. Meanwhile, its been 4 weeks where is my bike tick tock tick tock.

Soon after, the fork arrived, followed by the hub and pedals, and eventually Xmas will continue with the arrival of my thru axel adapter for the rack. I took the fork out of the box and looked it all over, but didn’t want to disturb anything. Like what am I gonna hurt laying it out on the kitchen table, when its going to take me up and over South Mountain? Its like I’m scared of it cause I don’t know quite what it does, which is yet again ironic because I had to pick the entire thing out based on specs and message boards and things I did not know what they did! Somehow cause I’ve spent so much time and energy on all this stuff its seems like I shouldn’t fear holding it like a newborn, but it all doesn’t seem real yet and I’m sure if I hold it I will break something.

and since with my riding that is often the case, I feel safer hiding from it all!